A 5,000 Mile Love Affair - Part Two

So we meet Foofer in this lovely Thai restaurant on Rainbow Blvd.

Siege says "Happy Birthday, I've bought you a present..." and then points to me, "...A new friend".

"Ooooh," flirts Foof, "can I take him home with me?" (Which surprised her as this isn't how she usually acts around strangers).

Me? I was taken by her eyes. She's a good-looking lady but those eyes are awesome.

"Nope," I thought to myself, "we live 5,000 miles apart, there's no way that I can fall in love with this girl," which is a strange thing to think when you first meet someone. I don't normally evaluate whether or not it's suitable to fall in love with people I've just met, especially when I know nothing about them.

Correction

The picture used in the previous entry was supposed to display romance.

I now notice that there are three prairie dogs in the picture, not two.

Our story isn't going to wander into tales of threesomes. Sorry.

A 5,000 Mile Love Affair - Part One

Considering that we're coming up to St. Valentine's Day (and we're basically treading water until the NOA2) I thought that maybe a little background was in order.

So what do you already know?
We're married, one of us is American, the other English.

So, as this is a week for romance (if you have any brains guys, every week is a week for romance), I thought that I'd share an edited history of "Foofer & Vlad - A 5,000 Mile Love Affair" with you...

I'm an Englishman, aged forty-two, who happens to have a number of friends in the USA. Most of these friends are based in and around Las Vegas and most of them are in the entertainment business. As I only really knew them via the internet, I flew out in 2007 to meet them in person. I had what was (up until then) the best time of my life and vowed to return the next year.

My friends Siege and JazzDemon offered to let me crash at their place, an offer I happily accepted and I flew out to stay with them for two weeks in April 2008. Once I had gotten used to the time difference we had a great time going to shows and doing touristy stuff. Unfortunately I got food poisoning that knocked me off my feet for a few days - I was left dehydrated, woozy and as weak as a kitten.

I only just felt well enough to go with Siege when she went to have dinner with her friend "Foofer" [note - I found out later that Siege had postponed the dinner date to wait until I was well enough to attend - sneaky move] to celebrate Foofer's birthday a few days before...

It's quiet . . too quiet

Yes it's been quiet. We knew that this would be the longest, (and hopefully the) most frustrating part of the process. The period between NOA1 and NOA2 seems to be the longest period of inaction in the entire CR-1 journey. Foofer has been ill for the past few days and is only just getting her voice back, so contact over the weekend was minimal.

Still, I'm going over to see her in less than sixty days for a quick visit so that keeps me cheerful. I've decided, as I explained how I'm calculating the expected processing date in the previous post, to add "estimated NOA2 date" to the timeline to the right - I'll keep it updated whenever I can. Hopefully it'll keep getting closer (and I mean a lot faster than "one day closer every day").

Update (the times they are a changin')

Okay, here's a quick update of where we are. We're still waiting for the I-130 to be processed by the CSC. Fortunately visajourney.com has good news here, over on the right, under the line "I-130 for IR1/CR1 & K-3 visas" is the date of the I-130s that the CSC are currently processing (go see, I'll wait). This date is currently quite a way into the past (i.e. there is a backlog) but is skipping forward at an impressive rate. If you take the number of days between that date and today you have the current waiting time. Add that onto your NOA1 date and you have a pretty good idea of when your I-130 will be processed.

Or you would if the CSC weren't clearing the backlog so fast :-)

So I'm keeping myself busy, watching that figure change daily, getting closer and closer...

As for my choice of POE, as I've stated before I have two candidates: Las Vegas or Dublin.

• Las Vegas because that's where I'm heading, it's where Foofer is and it's where I'll apply to have my green card extended and, eventually, where I'll apply for citizenship. If I give them my paperwork there, not only will my paperwork already be in the right place but I can also step straight out of immigration/customs into my wife's arms and not worry about making a connecting flight.
• Dublin because the immigration part is done in Dublin (customs is still done in the US) so I can get everything sorted before the flight takes off. This makes catching a connection in Chicago or New York a lot easier too.
  

I've got plenty of time to make my decision but happily, looking at visajourney, it's not as much time as I thought I had...

The best border?

This cool picture of the US border doesn't really have anything to do with this post. I was just looking at POE reviews on visajourney, trying to decide where to enter the US on my "one-way" flight to the US (yes, yes I'm still getting ahead of myself). They don't have any reviews for Vegas so I checked out the others.

POE stands for Port of Entry and it's where you officially enter the United States. My POE will be an airport and not a dusty road in California, Arizona or Texas. It's tricky to find the best POE as the reviews are mixed, though I do like the idea of entering via Dublin and having the immigration done at Dublin (yes, US immigration happens at Dublin - isn't that excellent?)

As to when I'll be entering the US, there's good news: The CSC are processing I-130s at an incredible rate - racing through the backlog. They seem to be processing a week's worth of I-130s in three working days. This is encouraging.

Word Cloud for January

How big the I-130 is in our lives!